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Hong Kong Victoria

1866 11 Pearls Ten Cent

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The Hong Kong ten cent 1866 was the first to be struck at the new Hong Kong mint. The obverse features the Leonard Wyon effigy of Queen Victoria along with the legend QUEEN VICTORIA. The reverse has the legend HONG KONG TEN CENTS with an inner circle containing Chinese characters depicting the date, denomination and country of origin. There were two types struck and this one is identifiable by having eleven pearls on the right arch of the Queens crown. The Type II had only ten pearls.

The official currency of Hong Kong was the British Pound although it was not well received by the population as the traders were used to the Chinese system of using the weight of silver for their transactions. It was the policy of the British Government to introduce sterling silver coinage to their colonies since 1825 and the Spanish and Mexican eight Reales became legal tender and set at a value of four shillings two pence. The Government eventually concluded that their efforts to introduce the sterling coinage was unsuccessful in overcoming the strong local support of the Spanish silver dollar. The British Government made the decision, as it had also done in Canada, that it could not displace the local currency and the Royal Mint in London commenced the issue of special subsidiary coinage to run alongside the local dollar currency.